Quoting from the 2002 paper
From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the “Violence” of Seattle, we can draw some conclusions about the effect of the violence that actually took place:
By definition, the news is about what is new, what is out of the ordinary. The news is attracted to disturbers of order and deviation from the routine. As the news adage goes, “if it bleeds, it leads” (Kerbel, 2000). Aside from bloodshed, nothing fits these parameters more precisely than symbolic protest violence and uncivil disobedience. In Seattle, such acts served to highlight the lack of citizen access and input in the WTO decision-making process. These acts also encouraged the police response of tear gas and concussion grenades that made for some of the most compelling images coming from the WTO protest. The symbolic violence and uncivil disobedience worked together in a nuanced fashion. The non-violent protesters served to provoke the police at least as much as the anarchists did. Indeed, police violence against nonviolent protesters performing uncivil disobedience started before the anarchists acted. We suspect that the anarchists’ symbolic violence justified intense media coverage of the police violence because media framing often portrayed the police violence as a response to the anarchists. In other words, the presence of the anarchists allowed the media to provide some sort of explanation, however inadequate, of a police force out of control. Police violence against activists at the IMF/ World Bank protest in Washington, D.C. the following spring went largely unreported. The event also lacked symbolic anarchist violence. In Seattle, then, symbolic violence and uncivil disobedience in concert produced compelling images that functioned as the dramatic leads for substantive discussions of the issues provoking the protests.
I think that this as a general premise works; the protesters would not have been able to avoid police brutality and violence. The violence that was committed by the protesters was of a symbolic nature, and actually helped the protests gain coverage and recognition, even shining light on, well, the subject of the protests itself:
Analysis of the television evening news coverage for the first day of violence, November 30, suggests the productive role of violence in social protest on the public screen. Combined coverage time on CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC increased by 26% from Monday’s coverage and the placement of the story improved from the third, fourth, or fifth story to the lead or second story. The opening images were clearly ones of violence and conflict: protesters smashing a Starbucks; police in sci-fi riot gear shooting tear gas canisters and concussion grenades; police roughing up protesters. Other images did get through, though: thousands in the labor march; environmentalists in sea turtle costumes; protesters nonviolently blocking streets. Significantly, the protesters’ criticisms of the WTO received an impressively extensive and sympathetic airing–the claim that the WTO is an undemocratic organization with a pro-corporate agenda that in practice overrules national labor, environmental, and human rights laws was broadcast to an international audience. In addition to the power of the images themselves, this airing happened in two ways. First, among the images of violence were interspersed quotations from the protesters. On NBC, for example, dramatic images of violence yielded to a female protester declaring, “We’re just normal people who are tired of the exploitation of the multi-national corporations throughout the world.” Second, the “breaking news” stories focusing on violent images were invariably followed by background stories focusing on the issues that make the WTO controversial. ABC reporter Deborah Wong concluded one such story: “For these protesters, this single organization, the WTO, has come to symbolize just about all that is wrong in the modern world. So in this global economy, where bigger is better and only the fittest survive, these people complain they have less and less control over their jobs and the laws which protect their communities.” Such background stories sought out the perspectives of protesters. On ABC, a female protester remarked, “There is a general dissatisfaction here with corporate culture, absolutely, and we’re not going to have that slammed down our throats.” CBS interviewed unemployed Mary Fleure of the United Steelworkers of America, who explained, “We’re just being swallowed up by corporate greed. We can’t compete. I can’t feed my family.”
I think that this suggests that when it comes to the Seattle protest, actual coverage also brought to light the grievances of the protestors and forced established media outlets to address the existence of dissent to what was going on at the time. So, violence increased coverage, brought more attention to the protest and opened up a conversation. But what would have happened, had the protest been an entirely peaceful one? Well, it would make sense to compare the coverage that the Seattle protests got with the coverage that equivalent
peaceful protests against the process of neoliberal globalisation, by the same alter globalisation movement, no?
After Seattle, the next major globalization event was the World Bank/ International Monetary Fund (WB/ IMF) spring meetings in Washington, D.C. The coverage pattern was almost the reverse of that in Seattle and suggests the crucial role of violence in garnering time on the public screen. On the Saturday and Sunday preceding the Monday opening, the WB/IMF protests were the lead story on six of the seven broadcasts (NBC did not have a Sunday evening broadcast) and received 10 and 13:20 minutes of coverage, respectively. Coverage peaked on Monday with the opening of the meetings. Although receiving 17:30 minutes of coverage, the WB/IMF protests were not the lead story on any network. Notably, due to a variety of factors, there was no active anarchist presence and much less police violence. Although the meetings and protests continued on Tuesday, there was no coverage at all that evening. Apparently, without violence or the threat of violence, the protests were not even worthy of coverage despite the significance of the issues being discussed. This pattern has repeated itself at other globalization events and protests.
One can also look at print media; here, the authors are talking about the New York Times, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today:
Prior to the anarchists’ symbolic violence, the uncivil disobedience, and the violent police response of Tuesday November 30 th , newspaper coverage was fairly limited (thirteen images and twenty-four articles). Judging by the number of articles covering the WTO convention (three on the 28th , 12 on the 29th , and 9 on the 30th ), the newspapers’ interest in the protest was beginning to wane by the morning of the 30 th until the violence in the streets shifted the coverage dramatically. The aggressive direct action protests and symbolic violence (which intensified the police response) catapulted the protests into national headlines. For the first time, on December 1 st all four newspapers ran front-page images of the convention, each opting to display pictures of the violent interaction between police and protesters. Fifteen of the images that accompanied the eighteen articles covering the WTO were of acts of uncivil disobedience or of the violent police response. Two images were of the anarchists and their actions. Two images were of the convention proceedings. Although violence was a focus of the photographs and the lead stories, the papers reported criticisms of the WTO and the predominantly peaceful character of the protests was emphasized. This trend continued on December 2nd , with the four newspapers running a noteworthy sixteen images of uncivil disobedience. If we are thinking of the newspapers through the metaphor of the public screen, then the front page becomes particularly important. Out of thirteen front-page images during the days of protest, eight were of uncivil disobedience, two were of peaceful protest, two were of the convention proceedings, and one was of an anarchist.
Again, we see the pattern of increased coverage of the actual issues the protestors were raising:
This attention to the conflict outside of the conference not only increased scrutiny of the action of the protesters and police, but also increased coverage of the WTO in general. For example, The New York Times ran two articles on the WTO on November 28 th , four on the 29th , four on the 30th , seven articles, editorials and letters to the editor on December 1st , and a remarkable fourteen documents on December 2nd . The shocking close-up of a woman’s bleeding face on A1 in the L.A. Times directs readers to A18 where another image of protesting in the streets draws readers’ attention to the column, “WTO: What’s at Issue?” The column lists and briefly explains the major issues facing the trade ministers in Seattle: agriculture, Uruguay round assessment, anti-dumping measures, labor and environment, WTO reform, intellectual property and China (Iritani, 1999). The New York Times makes a similar move on the 1st, creating a chart listing “Who’s Protesting and What They Object To” in the first column and “What They Want” in the second (“Behind the Hubbub in Seattle,” 1999). The article focuses solely on the issues of worker, environmental, and consumer groups. A similar dynamic was at work in the Washington Post and USA Today. “This weird jamboree” inspired USA Today to detail the issues of unions, environmentalists, steel workers, food-safety advocates, and poor countries (“Cover Story: This weird jamboree,” Cox and Jones, 1999, p. 1A). Far from stealing the limelight from the legitimate protesters, the compelling images of violence and disruption increased the news hole and drew more attention to the issues.
Compare and contrast these descriptions with the equivalent ones on the WB/IMF protests:
This increase in coverage can be compared to the coverage of the WB/ IMF protests in Washington, D.C. the following spring. Police cracked down on activists before the start of the conference by closing down protest headquarters and making preemptive arrests. These preventive strikes by the Washington, D.C. police curtailed most of the symbolic violence and direct action seen on the streets of Seattle. Backing our claim that the violence in the streets of Seattle actually produced more media coverage, the reporting on the WB/IMF conference did not spike as it did in Seattle. For example, in The New York Times coverage remained modest as the conference went on: three articles April 15 th , six on the 16th , six on the 17th , six on the 18th , and three on the 19th .
So, I think the beginning premise is wrong. Sure, "once protestors engage in violence, that's all many people can see".
But otherwise they won't see anything. Even if they see anything, they are unlikely to care, and might register it as background noise. Protests are not done to appeal to everyone, and expecting them to do so defeats the point of protesting. If the protestors at Seattle had not engaged in any sort of symbolic violence, then very few people would have remembered Seattle at all. As it stands, it functions as an important marker in the history of the alter globalisation movement.
Sorry for the walls of text/extensive quoting; as these protests are a quarter of a century old, it helps to look at more rigorous analysis of what media coverage was actually like. As for the case in point: I don't know how the Seattle protests could have been more successful. Maybe they would play a larger role in collective memory if the alter globalisation movement was more successful, or if the following protests also had some more symbolic violence, which would mean that Seattle could have been perceived as the start of something very big, and radical. As it is, the alter globalisation movement kind of petered out over time in many developed states, as I understand it. Had this not happened, they might regard the Seattle protests as even more of a foundational event in the history of the movement, so it would be remembered as more successful than it already was.
